Revelations this week that two Quebec police forces spied on journalists by secretly monitoring their smartphones was widely condemned in Canada and abroad as an outrageous attack on press freedom. Critics from Edward Snowden to domestic and international media groups decried the police tactics as a spectacular assault in a country that is widely considered to be a gold standard for democracy.

However, police and judicial threats to freedom of the press are nothing new in Canada and a public inquiry called into Quebec police tactics is a welcome opportunity for a much-needed examination into why state surveillance of journalists threatens us all.

Take these cases that have come to light in the last year alone. VICE’s Ben Makuch is currently embroiled in a court challenge after the RCMP ordered him to hand over chat logs with a source. In September, police seized the computer of Le Journal de Montreal’s Michael Nguyen, saying they wanted to track how he discovered a story about a judge. And just last month, Newfoundland online journalist Justin Brake was arrested while covering protests at Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador.

These cases have been covered on a piecemeal basis, in part because they don’t seem as far-reaching as the phone monitoring in Quebec, and also because the media can be tempered in reporting on themselves, for fear of appearing self-serving.

Attacks on press freedom, however, are anything but self-serving; they are attacks on the wider public as well because we all have a vested interest in journalists being able to do their jobs. These cases, for the most part, deal with judge-approved police tactics to root out sources. And protection of anonymous sources is a public concern because they won’t come forward if police can find out their identity. Sources matter, because stories that someone wants hidden will stay that way.

The inquiry is expected to delve into why Montreal police, armed with at least 24 court-sanctioned surveillance warrants, kept tabs on La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé’s location, text messages and phone calls, ostensibly because he was a suspected contact of a police officer who was under investigation. Lagacé has surmised that the real reason is that the department was trying to find his sources because he has written stories that embarrass the police.

The inquiry will also examine the provincial police force’s admission to cellphone monitoring of several investigative journalists. Investigative journalists depend on sources for the enormously important stories they often cover. The Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon on the early 1970s, for example, would have never come to light without a “deep throat” source.

Another reason the public should care about the Quebec police surveillance is that the technological capability to spy is outpacing legal protections for journalists, as former whistleblower Edward Snowden noted this week.

Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in the Charter of Rights, but there is no specific law in Canada allowing journalists to shield their sources, as there are in dozens of American states. Rather, the Supreme Court of Canada in 2010 rejected a class privilege for journalists, ruling that protection of sources would be decided case by case. The absence of a class privilege for journalists weakens their ability to challenge police surveillance.

A conceivable outcome of the inquiry, according to Montreal media lawyer Mark Bantey, is that it will call for a shield law for journalists to keep sources secret from police. However, it is difficult to give a class privilege when journalists are an undefined group.

The role of justices of the peace in authorizing warrants will also come under scrutiny, given that Montreal and Quebec provincial police went through legal channels to obtain permission. The Supreme Court ruled more than 25 years ago that allowing police to spy on journalists should be a last resort in criminal probes, but media lawyers speculate that the directive is widely abused.

All of these factors add up to a threat to journalists doing their jobs. An inquiry, although costly, is a necessary endeavour, and one the media should – and will – be all over.

Janice Tibbetts is a Carleton journalism instructor and a member of the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom.

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